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Posted: 2019-11-11T11:18:19Z | Updated: 2019-11-12T16:48:13Z

CUNDYS HARBOR, Maine When winter fell on this quiet, wooded island, instinct took over. Birds flew south. Trees shed leaves. Dain Bichrest set his alarm for 3 a.m.

Reaching a calloused hand through the frigid darkness, he silenced the device, stretched and started a routine that finished with the sea captain boarding his 42-foot boat and voyaging two hours into the Gulf of Maine to fishing grounds teeming with Northern shrimp. It became so routine hed start to wake automatically.

For fishermen like Bichrest, the small, tangerine-pink curlicues whose tenderness and sweet taste chefs from Manhattan bistros to New England clam shacks prize as a delicacy provided a supplemental source of income in the cold months after lobster season peaked in mid-December.

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For decades, a good day trawling the undersea gulches where Pandalus borealis thrive meant hauling 10,000 pounds of shrimp from the Gulf of Maines deeps. A bad day netted a catch closer to 1,000 pounds.

Thats the way it used to be. These days, to use a descriptor made saltier by Bichrests thick Downeast accent, the fishing is just shit.

In 2013, record-low levels of recruitment younger shrimp reaching breeding age compelled regional regulators to close the Gulf of Maine to shrimping. Six years later, the shrimp show no significant signs of recovery. Where previous periods of decline have been blamed on overfishing, this time the drop off is being attributed to a bigger force: climate change.

Anxiety is giving way to anger as fishers sentimental about tradition and skeptical of science find themselves pitted against regulators and environmentalists they vilify as more concerned with projections on paper than real-life livelihoods.